


Lost

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Copying my summary from my Tumblr post of this fic: Thank you to @ivebeensleepingonramimalek for this songfic request! This is perhaps one of the most perfect songs for Sledgefu I’ve ever heard, btw. Like, don’t get me wrong I have a lot of songs I hear and immediately go ‘holy shit the Boys, this is one of their songs’, but this one is big time Sledgefu. Idk how else to explain it, if you listen to it I promise you guys’ll get it lol.Quick warning for somewhat graphic descriptions of wartime violence in this.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Kudos: 3





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> The song in question is Lost by Dermot Kennedy, here’s a link to listen: https://open.spotify.com/track/57MUBmB0IhftnHLtlQK9JP

They’d been nearly two years back at home, but it was the smallest things that reminded him of where and when they’d first met. 

Unconscious things, subtle things. That they both kept a pair of shoes by their bed, despite knowing that there were few things that could happen that would require them to be dressed and ready as quickly as they had been back on Peleliu. That despite this wanting to be ready, neither of them could bear to have a gun in the house. One technically was, in that it was in a locked cupboard downstairs, unloaded, the ammo in a separate locked cupboard beside it. But that was as much as either of them could take, and they hadn’t once taken it out since putting it all away. 

Perhaps the most strange, most sweet, was how Eugene tucked himself against him in bed. It was exactly how he’d done in the foxholes; curled, arms wrapped around himself, his head pressed almost into Snafu’s underarm, occasionally making the softest and barely audible murmur. 

There was no danger, of course. But it was those little moments that meant more and more the longer they were together, holding and protecting one another from the memories of danger that some nights would run rabid in their heads. 

Which was why this night in particular, watching Eugene sleep, tucked just so with his hands still somehow reaching for the barrel of a gun that wasn’t there anymore, that it made tears sting his eyes. 

He gently brushed aside a lock of Eugene’s hair, aiming to be gentle enough not to wake him. 

But Eugene was on a hair trigger. 

His hand reached out and grabbed Snafu’s wrist hard enough to make him wince. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was enough to make the tears start to fall. 

“Sledgehammer,” Snafu murmured, leaning down awkwardly to press a kiss to Eugene’s hand, still grasped tight around his wrist. “Just me, boo. We’re safe.” 

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t fully awake, as they darted around the darkened room, looking for shadows of enemy troops that weren’t there. 

“Eugene,” Snafu whispered, moving as best he could so his eyes could meet Eugene’s dead on. “Look at me. You’re okay. Come on back.” 

Eugene’s eyes slowed, and fixed on his, his hand starting to loosen its grip. 

“There you go. What color are my eyes?” 

Eugene blinked rapidly. “…pretty.” 

“…that’s not a color, but thank you,” Snafu laughed as he gently pulled his hand back, and moved it to pull Eugene closer by his hip. “You back?” 

Eugene nodded and yawned, and he knew he had him back to earth. “Sorry.” 

“No need to be sorry. Just taking care of you,” Snafu said, wiping away the few tears that had escaped. 

They lay in the almost-silence of the house, quiet except for the sound of their breathing, a bird outside, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall just outside their room. 

“You remember how often we had to do that, taking care of each other like that, back…you know,” Eugene broke the silence with a sigh. Tonight was evidently rougher than usual; he only tripped and hesitated at saying Peleliu or Okinawa when he was really struggling with the nightmares and memories. 

Snafu nodded as he tried to hold him tighter, pull him closer, even though they were already about as close as two people could possibly get. “Yeah. Fallin’ asleep against each other, really just waitin’ to take our turns at watch. Calming each other and workin’ each other through the nightmares. Never really felt like I got any sleep back then. How the hell did we do it?” 

“‘Cause we had to,” Eugene replied. “Sleep meant we might not make it back.” 

And that made Snafu’s heart stop in his chest. “I…do you ever think about what you would have done? I mean, if one of us…” 

He couldn’t say it out loud. They were safe in a locked house, in the back roads of Mobile, but it still felt like testing fate somehow. 

“Yeah. At first…I figured I could go on. Would have hurt like hell, and I know I would have struggled. But after the first, hell, three weeks of knowin’ you,” Eugene replied. “They would have had to pull me back from runnin’ out to be hit. Would have felt pointless, trying to go on without you. And would you believe I was still tryin’ to tell myself back then that I just liked you a lot, and that was all?” 

He laughed, and pressed a kiss to Snafu’s cheek. “I was dumb as hell.” 

“Naw. I was doin’ the same thing, for a good while. Until I couldn’t look past it anymore, and couldn’t envision goin’ home without you. Think I would have just ran out with a grenade and let it destroy me if anything had happened to you,” Snafu said. He’d had nightmares about it, more than once, back in the foxholes. Watching Eugene die, seeing his blood streak the mud and dirt, his eyes lifeless, the last thing he’d look at before pulling the pin from a grenade and running out towards the Japanese troops, letting bullets rip into him before the grenade would go off and tear him up. Some nights, in the nightmare, he died right as it went off. Others were worse. Those nights, he’d dream of not dying even after the grenade went off, watching Eugene be left to lay in the mud while he was taken away on a stretcher, screaming to be left to die by his side. 

Those nights, he’d offer to take another shift of watch, because there was no attempting to even try and sleep after that, and only the sight of Eugene alive and resting near him in the foxhole would help calm him down.

“You think you would have made it, if we hadn’t ended up in the same company?” Snafu asked. “Sometimes…I just wonder about it. I don’t know if I…” 

He couldn’t physically get any closer to Eugene now, but he paid that no mind as he wound himself tighter around Eugene, until they were a mess of curled warm limbs, pressed against each other. 

“I don’t know. Even if I had…I know I wouldn’t be doin’ as well as I am now. Might be alive, but just because you’re alive doesn’t mean you’re living. But here, now? We’re alive, and we’re living. Because we found each other, somehow, in the mess of it all. Got lucky enough to have fate put us together,” Eugene replied. 

And it was this, what they couldn’t have ever done in the foxholes, that made it all feel like home, like safety. Stretched out together, intertwined, Eugene’s breath on his shoulder, with no watch to keep. 

“You’ve got a way with words, Sledgehammer,” he sighed as the tears, happy this time, threatened to escape again. “I like that. We’re not just alive; we’re living, because we found each other.” 

Eugene didn’t respond, just held him tight and kissed him, softly and sleepily. 

“Go on back to sleep,” Snafu instructed quietly, knowing he didn’t need to do so. Eugene was tired, his eyes shut again, his chest slowly moving with each breath. 

He couldn’t sleep just yet. Instead, he resumed his watch of Eugene, willing away the old nightmare images, and replacing them with what was in front of him. 

His husband, alive and well, sleeping safely in his arms. No need to worry about any enemy stealing away either of their lives, and their happiness. Just the quiet of the night, and the reassuring glint and shine of their wedding rings barely visible in the natural light just starting to filter through the drapes over their bedroom window.


End file.
